Footprint In The Sand
by IndianSummer
Summary: Twenty years later, to the day, tragedy repeats itself, and this time it’s Brooke and Lucas’ teenage daughter caught in the crossfire. Can the divorced couple get it together when their daughter’s life hangs in the balance? Mature themes, school shooting.
1. Red Like The Sunset After A Wild Fire

Title: Footprint in the Sand

Author: Summer

Rating: T, will likely go up to M

Title: Twenty years later, to the day, tragedy repeats itself, and this time it's Brooke and Lucas' teenage daughter caught in the crossfire. Can the divorced couple get it together when their daughter's life hangs in the balance?

Author's Note: This idea came to me suddenly last night, and I pondered it for a while before deciding to write it. I've had a lot of ideas come to me for "One Tree Hill" fiction, but I also have a lot of stories to finish, so I've been putting off writing them. But this strikes me as an important story to tell. The content may not be something you're comfortable with, and there's definitely a lot of tragedy at the beginning, but I promise you there will be happiness as well.

……….

Red. Not that bright shade in a child's paint set, or the burgundy of the bridesmaids' dresses at his wedding. The weekend he and his ex-wife had spent painting his office, she'd commented that it was the color of a sunset after a wildfire, and the description had stuck.

Now, though, as Lucas Scott gripped the office phone so tightly his knuckles turned white, the red he was seeing wasn't just on the walls. It flooded through his body, clenching his heart and surrounding his brain, his ability to think rationally disappearing. "You want to _what?"_ he spat into the phone, annoyance evident in his voice.

There was an exasperated sigh on the other end, and then a husky voice murmured, "She's sixteen, Luke. And from what you've told me, it sounds like she needs more female influence, someone she can confide in, a mother figure-"

"A mother _figure?_" Lucas repeated with a roll of his eyes, picking the framed picture of his teenage daughter up off his desk and studying it. "No, Brooke, what she needs is a _mother,_ and you've made it perfectly clear-"

"That isn't fair!" his ex-wife interrupted, practically shouting. "I gave you sole custody because we agreed she needed stability, and moving back and forth between Tree Hill and New York constantly wouldn't give her that. You _know_ that, so how dare you say I don't want to be her mother anymore!"

Clenching his teeth, Lucas had to admit that Brooke had always acted in their daughter's best interests. "She's hit a rough patch, Brooke," he pleaded, running his index finger along the edge of the photograph, "Give it a few weeks and she'll snap out of it. You'll see."

"Snap out of it? Luke, our teenage daughter bought a pregnancy test, and the only reason you know about it is because you found the box in the trash. You don't even know what the results were! How do you know she can just snap out of it? If getting un-pregnant was as simple as snapping your fingers, I doubt social workers would have jobs."

Wincing, Lucas set the photo back down as Brooke brought the ugly truth back to his attention. "Yeah, I know. I'm going to talk to her tonight, though, and we'll figure it out, either way."

"This is our daughter's life, Lucas. If she is pregnant, she needs me. And if she isn't, she still needs me. I think she should move up to New York, at least for a while. There are good schools up here and I could book her an appointment with my therapist, and-"

She broke off suddenly and Lucas furrowed his brow in confusion, wondering if he'd lost the call. There wasn't a dial tone, but the home phone line had been acting funny…

Just as he was about to set the phone down in its cradle, he heard a bustling in the background and a mechanical sounding siren.

"Luke?" Brooke's voice was soft when she spoke again, and she sounded oddly distant. "Luke?"

"Yeah… I'm still here."

"P-put on the TV," she stumbled over her words, and something in her tone made his stomach twist.

He scrambled around for a remote before remembering he was in his office, that there wasn't a television there. "I don't have a TV in here," he responded with a frown, "What are you watching?"

"Put. On. The. TV." When she repeated the sentence, it was slow and demanding, yet vulnerable. "Just put it on."

He was about to protest the hysterics when he heard what sounded like a whimper from her end of the phone. "Alright, I have to put the phone down, though. One minute."

Setting the phone down on his desk, Lucas pushed himself wearily out of the computer chair he'd had since college and walked slowly out of the room. His speed decreased as he walked down the hall to the den, not because he wanted to annoy Brooke but because he had a vague sensation he was walking toward some personal hell.

Picking up the phone in the den as he rounded the corner into the room, Lucas murmured into the phone, "Alright, I'm in the den," as he picked up the remote and switched the television on.

And then his heart stopped.

………..

"This is almost too easy," Declan Covington murmured as he gazed at the expansive brick building, foreboding now due to the silence that surrounded it, the lack of activity bustling from its doors as the bell signaling the end of the school day provided a shrill backdrop for television broadcasts around the nation.

His camerawoman, Penny LeBlanc, nodded but didn't bother to look up from behind the lens she was adjusting. "Yeah… yeah, you're right," she returned distractedly, holding up her right hand, fingers outstretched, and slowly lowering one at a time. As she lowered the last, she spoke up assuredly, "You're on."

Declan cleared his throat quickly, and he didn't have to feign a grave expression as he focused his gaze on the camera. "Declan Covington reporting from Tree Hill, North Carolina, a small coastal town about twenty miles north of the city of Wilmington. Today, lightning struck twice for this close-knit community. Twenty years ago, to the day, a school shooting claimed the lives of seventeen year old James Edwards, and thirty-six year old Keith Scott, who'd entered the school in an attempt to talk young Edwards out of the horrific crime. Now, as the school marked the twentieth anniversary of this tragedy with a memorial service, a gunman-"

A _bang_ behind them stirred Declan into silence and he glanced over his shoulder, camera still rolling as Penny adjusted it to focus on the main entrance of Tree Hill High School, which had just been flung open, a stream of students running from the building.

Staring in horror for a minute, Declan watched the ashen faced students rush into the courtyard, the SWAT team roaring into action and running forward, shouting orders for the students to drop to the ground, and then his gaze went back to the door, to the stragglers.

The broken, the bloody, the limping. "Turn off the camera," he instructed Penny in shock, his voice barely above a whisper as a brunette girl hovered in the doorway, glancing down at the stairs but not breaking into a run as the others had. Instead, he saw her gulp, and then she was pushed forward, an arm encircling her roughly from behind. He saw the gun dug into her side before he saw the shooter standing behind her.

Even from fifty yards away, Declan could see the girl's wide blue eyes pleading with the crowd, tears streaming down her pale face. From her expensive fitted jeans and silky brown locks, he knew immediately that she'd have been one of the giggling, popular girls in the middle of the lunch room on any other day.

And then the gun went off, and the girl buckled before falling to the ground, scarlet pooling underneath her.

"Abby!"

The shout was heartbreaking, clear over the barrage of shots that followed as the SWAT team took down the gunman, and Declan craned his head in that direction. "Don't film him," he instructed Penny, even as all the other networks swiveled their cameras around to catch the first image of a victim's father.

The man was dressed casually, as if he'd come from home rather than an office like most of the other parents lingering behind the yellow tape, and his blond hair was a tousled mess, as if he'd been running his hands through it on the drive to the school. But what caught Declan's addition was the effortless way the tall blond man tore through the yellow tape and broke through the throng of police officers as he closed the distance between himself and his teenage daughter.

………….

One of the perks of being a successful fashion designer was the even more successful friends she'd made. Almost as soon as Lucas had assured Brooke that he'd rush to the school and disconnected their call, the phone had rung again.

Academy Award winning actress Chloe Olsen's melodic voice had filled the line, cutting through the bullshit of the usual pleasantries with, "That news report- isn't Tree Hill were your daughter lives?"

Forty minutes later, Brooke was boarding Chloe's private plane housed at LaGuardia Airport, the pilot already waiting to take her to Tree Hill.

Collapsing onto a couch positioned on the left side of the cabin, Brooke hadn't even had a chance to open the quickly packed carry-on she'd brought along before the plane lurched forward, taxiing onto the runway. She glanced up briefly before returning her attention to her bag, fiddling with the zipper and pulling out the photo album she'd kept in her office.

The divorce had been hard on Abby, twelve going on twenty-one at the time, and precocious as all hell. Brooke squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the fears that had been running through her head since she'd first flipped on the television.

Sending your child to school wasn't supposed to lead to this. It was natural for a parent to have trouble letting go, to cry when their five year old got on the bus for the first time. But after years of sending a child to school for 180 days each year, give or take a few, that fear disappeared in most cases.

For Brooke, it had never totally left her, but it had faded into the background, becoming little more than a nightmare. It wasn't something she thought of every day, but now that she was faced with the reality, memories of her own longest school day flooded back to her.

She remembered after the shooting, the news had held reports of "Tree Hill High students were among the lucky, when the only student to die was the shooter." It had always angered her that they were supposed to think they were "lucky." She wanted to call in, to ask, "What about my best friend, who will have a scar on her leg to remember the day by for the rest of her life? What about my boyfriend, whose uncle was killed being a hero? What about his mother, who lost her fiancée? What about _me?_ I lost my hope for normalcy, my belief that everything will work out in the end."

And now, it was happening all over again, and this time it was happening to her daughter. Abby, who'd rolled her eyes at her mom the last time she'd seen her and told her that she was old enough to go back-to-school shopping with friends, that she didn't need her famous fashion designer mom to pick out her clothes for her anymore. Abby, who'd always brushed off Brooke's concerns about school safety, and told her to stop worrying when Brooke would dwell on the Code Yellows and Code Reds outlined in the safety packets the students were handed in homeroom on the first day of school every year.

Abby, who at the best, had had her whole life altered today in a way Brooke had hoped her daughter would never have to experience. And at the worst, who'd had her life ended.


	2. White Like Antiseptic Mixed With Decay

**Chapter Two**

* * *

White. Sterile, bleak, and with an overwhelming stench of antiseptic mixed with death and decay. Even the way nurses talked in dramatic whispers and the awkward propriety that governed behavior in waiting rooms felt sterile, foreign, unnatural. 

So it wasn't really any surprise Brooke Davis hated hospitals. The last time she'd been inside of one, she'd been a senior in high school, and her ex-boyfriend had had a heart attack. At the time, she'd never imagined that they'd reunite, that in three short years she'd be telling him she was pregnant with his child, or that in six they'd be married.

At the time, all she'd thought about was his life. She'd made a deal with a God she wasn't sure she believed in that day, that she'd start going to church again, that she'd donate half of her wardrobe to that fund local parishioners had set up for the poor, if He'd just let Lucas pull through.

And for a while, she had gone to church again, and she had certainly donated more than half of her clothes to the homeless. But there was only so long she could believe that Lucas' survival had been God's will, and not the doctors'. So she'd stopped attending mass regularly, and after a couple months of watching her ex-boyfriend and her best friend hold hands, she'd stopped going all together.

Now, as she walked down the halls of the Tree Hill Trauma Ward, she wondered idly whether each person only had one bargaining opportunity with God, and if she'd wasted hers on Lucas. After all, she could bet Karen had been praying, and Peyton, too.

She heard a wail, the kind one mother knows is coming from another, and her pace quickened as her heart broke- for herself, for Abby, for the mother who had just found out her child wouldn't get a miracle tonight.

God, she hated hospitals. When she was six months pregnant with Abby, she'd told Lucas she couldn't deliver her in a hospital, that she hated the doctor she'd been seeing and the clinical way he talked about her fetus. He'd told her it was just a phase, that she'd get through it and they'd wind up in the hospital after the first contraction.

She was pretty sure he'd still believed that all the way to the birthing center, until her midwife met them at the door.

Hospitals were so sterile, so cold, so unfeeling. They weren't any place for a teenage girl, and they certainly weren't any place for Brooke. But the police officer who'd given her a ride to the hospital had filled her in on the reality of the situation- her daughter had been shot in front of hundreds of onlookers, and it was being shown internationally on breaking news clips as they spoke.

Eighteen sets of parents would never see their children alive again, never have the chance to tuck them in at night or tell them how proud they were or pull them into a hug that they never wanted to end. Eighteen sets of parents had lost the thread that held them together, that gave them a reason for waking up in the morning and a reason for taking each breath.

And fourteen more sets of parents, including Brooke and Lucas, were playing the waiting game. They still had the chance to tell their children how proud they were of them, but it might be just for a fleeting instance, it might only be for the night.

She remembered the wail, suddenly realizing with a shock that the numbers had already changed. Make that nineteen sets of parents who'd never have the chance, and thirteen who weren't sure how long their chance would last.

Her steps continued to gain speed until she was racing down the hallway, sprinting toward the waiting room she'd been instructed to find her ex-husband in, to sit idly by while her daughter's life was held in the balance.

She didn't want to miss her chance. She didn't want Abby not to know how proud she was.

.  
.

If the circumstances had been different, his breath would've been taken away by Brooke's beauty. He would've lost his train of thought, finally managing to say something among the stuttering like, "Wow, you look great." And there was a very good chance he would've forgotten about all the pain they'd caused each other, all the drama of the past five years, and pushed her up against the wall and kissed her until she forgot, too.

But as it was, Lucas barely noticed Brooke's silky smooth hair, or the way her Clothes/Bros original dress managed to blend sophisticated work chic with sexy, melded to every curve sensuality. Instead, he saw the wrinkles in her dress, the way her hair was a little messy and matted in the back since she hadn't bothered to brush it after the flight, the way her mascara seeped into the usually invisible crow's feet developing around the thirty-seven year old's eyes.

"Brooke," he murmured as he folded his ex-wife into his arms, squeezing her tight as her own arms wrapped around his shoulders and she sobbed into his shirt. They stood like that for a minute, rocking slowly back and forth, their bodies linked together as if it hadn't been over four years since the last time they'd been this close.

She didn't say anything, not right away, her breath warm against his chest and her head nestled under his chin as her body shook ever so slightly as she cried. When she finally pulled away, she'd regained some sense of professionalism, the way she'd always dealt with uncomfortable situations. "How is she?" she asked, her voice oddly distant. "Have the doctors given you any updates?"

He paused for a minute, wetting his lips as he tried to figure out what to tell her. On one hand, he wanted to protect her, wanted to shield her from the reality for just a few minutes longer, wanted to take her away from the real world. But on the other, she was Abby's mother, and Abby needed her, and as hard as it was for him to admit, so did he. And she needed the truth.

"Not good." His voice cracked as he spoke, and he ran a hand through his messy hair as he forced himself to hold her gaze. "She's in surgery right now, her second one. They did an exploratory surgery when she first got here, to try to trace the path of the- of the bullet." He gulped, meeting Brooke's gaze. "They had to remove one of her kidneys, and there's a tear in her intestines as well as some other damage that they weren't sure about."

"Oh my- oh my God," Brooke murmured, squeezing her eyes shut and taking a deep, shaky breath. "How long is she going to be in there? How long- how long is she-" She didn't finish the second question, and Lucas knew why.

"I don't know," he told her softly, staring down at the floor for a minute. "They said they were hopeful." He let out a dry, angry laugh, as if that meant anything. Hope was a foreign emotion to him in that moment. "The next twenty four hours are going to be critical, and if she- if she makes it, the next forty-eight… her standard of living, whether or not she'll recover fully…"

He trailed off, and Brooke nodded. They stared at each other for a moment, having a silent conversation with their eyes. Even after years of being apart, they still didn't need words to convey what they were both thinking.

This was it. This was scary, and this was final, and this was without a doubt the worst moment of their lives. And regardless of what happened, neither would ever be the same.  
.

.  
.

Penelope LeBlanc crossed her legs as she sat impatiently in the waiting room the hospital had turned into a makeshift press room, staring at Declan Covington. His prematurely graying hair was blowing unnaturally like it always did- there was no breeze, and his hair was so short it shouldn't have mattered anyway, but there was something insanely insatiable about her partner, some kind of airbrushed perfection that meant he always looked like he had just stepped out of the pages of GQ.

She hated him for it, and at the same time… well, she was a woman.

"Declan!" Her voice was louder than what was probably necessary to catch his attention, but something about this story had him acting strangely. "It's your call, Declan."

She'd told him that so many times in the past hour and a half that she wasn't surprised when he didn't bother to look up. Glancing around the crowded room, she lowered her voice and leaned in toward him, murmuring, "I don't have any underwear on."

That got his attention. Well, sort of. "What?" he asked distractedly, glancing up at her and raising an eyebrow. "Do you really think that's appropriate given-"

"No, I don't," Penelope cut him off, shaking her head. "But I also don't think it's appropriate that you're one of the most decorated journalists in television and you're falling apart over a story like this when you should be reporting it." She sighed, kicking her legs out from under the seat and studying him. "It's your call. You can either do your job and report on what happened today, follow up with the parents of these kids, or we can go back to the office and have them send someone else down here to do it for you."

Declan frowned, thinking for a minute as he narrowed his cerulean eyes at her. Then he nodded, just slightly, and the familiar passion and determination she'd been so attracted to when she first started working with him returned. "Alright. Alright, lets get the story here." He took a deep breath, studying her. "We're not showing that footage, though. Of Abigail Scott getting shot. We aren't barbarians."

Penelope wasn't sure she agreed, but she didn't say anything. Reporters were vultures, barbarians by the very nature of their job. They fed on tragedy, profited from angst and heartbreak. They were in the faces of grieving widows, making sure they got the clip of the dead soldier's pregnant wife consoling the children, the picture of the car the senator was traveling in when it clipped and derailed a train. "There's still a story there, Declan, and you need to cover it," she pointed out, glancing toward the doorway to the room. "It's better you break it than any of them."

It hadn't taken Declan long, with all his connections to New York socialites, to learn that the last victim of the Tree Hill '26 shooting, Abigail Faith Scott, was the daughter of elite fashion designer Brooke Davis and ten time bestselling author Lucas Scott.

"Let's film in the hallway, then," Declan responded after a brief pause, unfolding his lanky form and pulling himself to his feet, offering her his hand.  
.  
.

The silence was thick in the surgical wing's waiting room, currently filled with parents of the victims of the school shooting. The only time the silence was broken was when a doctor appeared, detached and removed, features hidden and expressionless underneath a surgical mass, to deliver updates to parents. The count was currently up to twenty-five dead, two expected to heal, and five still in surgery.

"It's been over four hours," Brooke whispered to Lucas as both stared straight ahead. The four years they'd spent apart had failed to matter in the past four hours, and about an hour or so ago, Brooke had crawled into Lucas' lap and pulled him into a hug as he rocked her back and forth, cradling her like a baby.

They'd been like that ever since, and although she was sure Lucas' legs were either sore or numb from her weight, he hadn't complained. Now, his fingers tangled in her hair as he massaged the back of her head the same way he'd soothed her during labor sixteen years earlier, he mumbled, "That's probably good, right? It means they're doing work on her, that they can do work."

She nodded slightly, his fingers pulling on her hair. "Yeah. I guess." Her tone sounded less than sure, but neither wanted to speak of the other possibility. Things couldn't be going so badly that they were having trouble, that there was more damage than expected.

Before they had any more of a chance to probe the possibilities, a doctor reappeared in the doorway. They'd seen her once before; an attending overseeing the surgeries of a few different patients. The last time she'd been out, it had been with bad news, and Mrs. Fonseca had been sedated after a meltdown.

"Who's here for Abigail Scott?" Her voice was tired, and she'd no doubt been expecting to leave the hospital hours earlier, before any of this had happened. All the trauma ward's employees had been asked to stay on or called in as soon as the news of a shooting had broken.

Brooke climbed out of Lucas' lap before he'd even had a chance to process the question, rushing over the doctor as he followed more slowly behind, mentally preparing himself for whatever she was going to say.

"I'm Dr. Brady," the woman introduced herself kindly; even though all the surgeons had introduced themselves, they were aware that family members had a lot more on their minds than who the doctor was.

"How is she?" Brooke asked nervously, trying to read the surgeon's stoic expression. "How's Abby? Is she- did she make it?"

Dr. Brady swallowed, and Brooke took a step back, a step into Lucas' arms, sure that wasn't a good sign. "Doctor?"

"There was a complication during surgery," Dr. Brady started slowly, glancing from Brooke to Lucas and back again. "Your daughter hemorrhaged at the two hour and sixteen minute mark, and she lost a lot of blood."

"What?" Brooke's voice broke as she leaned back against Lucas' chest for support, her knees shaking and her eyes widening as she took in the doctor. "What are you saying? Are you saying she-"

"Your daughter is very lucky to be alive," Dr. Brady interrupted quickly, the left corner of her lips curling into a small smile. "She needed a blood transfusion, and we replaced nearly a quarter of all the blood in her system, so she's going to be under careful observation. Her surgery was complicated, but we were able to repair much of the bullet's damage, but I need to warn you there is a possibility of serious complications. The next twenty-four hours will be critical, alright?"

"Alright," Brooke's voice shook, and Lucas nodded as he held his ex-wife, his strength all that was keeping her on her feet at the moment.

"She'll be moved up to the intensive care unit shortly to recover, and the doctors up there will assess her and be able to give you a more detailed prognosis than I can right now. I'm going to send one of my interns out to guide you up to the ICU, so please wait a couple moments. Okay?"

"Yeah… yeah, we can do that," Lucas spoke up quickly before Brooke had a chance to disagree. He knew her well enough to know that she was just as likely to launch into some angry lecture on how they weren't going to sit idly by and wait to meet their daughter up in the ICU as she was to timidly agree, and he didn't want to take the chance of that right now.

Brooke whimpered in Lucas' arms, clinging to his chest as the doctor walked back out of the waiting room.  
.  
.  
.

"No one's gonna know it's just an office, Declan," Penelope told her partner with a roll of her eyes as he stared dubiously at the office door right outside the surgical ward, hoping to cut off one of Declan's all too typical diatribes on images not representing reality and a journalist's responsibility to viewers. "Plus, it doesn't really matter. We want to show we're in the hospital, and we are. You aren't going to say anything about being in front of the door where a surgery is being performed, right?"

"Of course not," he answered a little too quickly, and then shook his head. "No… no, I guess this will be okay. Set 'er up," he added, gesturing to the camera Penelope was carrying.

Penelope jokingly called herself the Tripod for a reason. No, she hadn't been born with a deformed third leg, as Declan liked to claim, or anything like that. She just an unusual steadiness in holding the camera, so a real tripod was rarely necessary. "It's kind of funny. Did you know my dad wanted me to go to med school?" she asked Declan as she switched out the zoom lens on the camera, glancing up at him.

"No." He shot her a puzzled look, wondering where this was going.

"Well, he did. He said it would've been a better use of my fine motor skills. That my hand not shaking while I held a scalpel would mean a lot more than a steady camera."

Declan nodded, combing his fingers through his hair for a last minute touchup. "But you were an AV geek," he finished unceremoniously for her, blinking. "You ready?"

"Yeah," Penelope murmured, annoyed with herself for doing this again. She always tried this with Declan, to let him in, to get him to let her in, as if somehow a little more familiarity would make her feel better about letting him use her as a sex toy for the past year and a half. "5...4.…3...2...annnnd go."

Declan's gaze fell on the camera and his voice regained its air of authority as he spoke, "The hostage situation in Tree Hill High School in North Carolina came to an end today at 2:04, just a few minutes after the school day would normally end. Students streamed out of the building, leaving only the dead and disabled behind, aside from one young girl, who the shooter had chosen to use as a shield."

He paused for a couple seconds, his gaze flickering over the camera to Penelope, who sighed and nodded slightly. "Her middle name is Faith, ironic given the circumstances. Abigail Faith Scott was the last victim in the Tree Hill High School shooting today, and nothing is known about her condition currently. The daughter of fashion designer Brooke Davis, who has a couture label in her name as well as the women's casual line Clothes over Bros, Abigail's father is another celebrity- Tree Hill's own Lucas Scott, ten time best selling author of works such as 'An Unkindness of Ravens' and 'The Biggest Mistake He Ever Made.' Abigail emerged from the high school with the shooter behind her, a gun dug into her side, a few inches above her hip. A few seconds later she was shot, and the SWAT team quickly closed in around the shooter, killing him."

Declan swallowed hard as he remembered the way the blood had poured from Abigail, how life had drained from her body in the moment it took before the paramedics could get to her, scarlet dripping down the front steps of the school. "Upon entering the school, police officers found eighteen dead and another thirteen seriously wounded. Adding in the superficial injuries, this brings the toll of today's events up to 46 injured or dead, including two teachers and Abigail's shooter. It is currently unknown whether there were any additional gunmen."  
.

.  
.

Three thousand miles away, Haley James-Scott blanched as she listened to the news from her hotel room, partially annoyed for having to hear about her niece's shooting on the news, but at the same time understanding how Lucas had overlooked calling. She and Nathan had a daughter themselves in the high school, but Haley was sure they would've got in touch with her by now if something was wrong with Sadie.

"Nathan!" she screamed, calculating in her head how long it would take for them to get a leave of absence from the Bobcats, find a plane, and get back to Tree Hill. "Nathan!"


	3. Blue Like Her Daddy's Eyes

Hey guys! Sorry for the extreme delay in getting a new chapter up- things were pretty hectic with school and work, and I didn't think it would be fair to not give this story my full attention. Now that the semester's over, though, I'll have plenty of time to write. Look for the next chapter within a few days.

Obviously, this chapter is going to be disturbing for some people.

* * *

**  
**

**Chapter Three**

Blue. It was a pretty, peaceful blue, not like the color of the jeans she'd decided to wear that morning or the blue green of the ocean. It was the color of the sky on a sunny day, of her daddy's eyes. She'd been blessed to have her daddy's eyes, her mom used to say.

Her mom had pretty eyes, too, but her father had the type of eyes that colored contacts couldn't even improve upon.

With a start, she realized she wasn't laying in her bed. It was more firm, and worse yet, her whole body hurt. '_Oh boy, what did I do to myself this time?'_ she started to ask herself, realizing even her thoughts were foggy. It wasn't beer, then, because that didn't do this to her mind. She'd learned her lesson the last time she'd had too much tequila, so it wasn't that, either.

She tried to shift onto her side, but a dull ache in her belly stopped her, and if that hadn't, it would've been the strings attached to her chest and arms. "What the hell?" she wanted to say, but when she opened her mouth to speak, she realized with a start that there was one down her mouth as well.

She tried to push it out with her tongue, to cough it out, and then she was gasping for air as she realized it was filling her whole throat.

"You've been intubated," spoke up a confident voice that she didn't recognize, "You have a tube down your throat to help you breathe. Don't fight it."

'_But I don't need to help breathing,'_ she thought, her mind whirling in confusion.

"You have no idea how pleased I am to see you awake," spoke up that strange voice, and then there was a pressure on her eyelids which she hadn't realized were still closed, and fingers on the side of her neck, and she wanted to lift her hands to push the weirdo away, but they felt heavy. "Alright, your vitals are good. I'm going to go get your parents."

Abigail Scott opened her eyes in confusion, blinking as harsh white light flooded her field of vision, and then squeezing her eyes shut again as she was able to process that there was a light right above her face. Her _parents?_ But her mom was in New York!

She raised an eyebrow, since that was about all she could do, wondering what the hell was going on and where she was. The last thing she remembered was getting to school that morning, and there was some strange commotion, and people running through the hallways…

Raising the other eyebrow, she tried to probe her fuzzy mind to remember _why_ people were running, why everything had been so confusing when she got to school.

"Oh my God, Abby, I was so scared."

Her mother. Abby opened her eyes again, blinking and then rolling her eyes back in her head, trying to get her mom to understand that the light was bothering her, trying to get her to move it or turn it off. She didn't get it though, and instead Abby was brought back to wondering why her mom was in Tree Hill.

"You were in surgery so long, and me and your father were so worried, and then when they told us you were out but you'd lost blood-"

"Brooke, do you really think this is the time to be telling her this?"

Abby's lips curved up around the tube at her father's voice, still not having a clue what the hell was going on but reassured to hear him, happy to have both her parents in the same room and not really fighting.

"You're right," her mom told her father, which surprised her even more. Even when her dad was right- which was often- her mom _never_ admitted it. "Oh, Abby, I was just so scared! I'm so happy you're awake, Abby."

There was a bustling of movement around her, and then a creak and a screeching that she vaguely recognized was someone sitting down in a chair and pulling it closer.

"Do you remember what happened?" Her father was asking, and then she saw his face, blurry at first, and then gradually focusing, much like when a camera zooms in, hovering over her.

She tries to respond, tried to force that dumb tube that she most certainly didn't need out of her mouth, but she couldn't, and she looked at her father in frustration, wondering how to answer.

"Oh, uh, blink once for no and twice for yes," he told her after a few seconds, "I think that's what the doctor said, at least."

She blinked once, slowly and deliberately.

He sighed, pushing the light aside, and glancing down at her, his eyes sad. "Abby, someone brought a gun to your school yesterday, and…"

She knew on some level he was still talking, but her mind was back in the hallways of Tree Hill High as the picture refocused, students running through the halls as shots sounded, so close.

………….

**Twenty-Six Hours Earlier**

Abigail leaned against the railing on the steps of the main entrance to school, waiting for her friends as she considered her appearance. She'd spent extra time in front of the mirror this morning, making sure the puffy redness around her eyes was concealed, and careful use of eye shadow and mascara concealed the fact that she'd cried herself to sleep the previous night.

She'd applied her powdered bronzer liberally to mask how pale she looked, and she'd used an electric curler to give some wave to her locks.

If she had to feel like crap, she wanted to look phenomenal.

"Hey Abby," Jacob Kincaid tore her from her thoughts as he came to a stop next to her, slipping an arm casually around her waist and pulling her closer with a smirk. "You seem out of it. Were you thinking about me?"

"Hardly," Abigail returned with a roll of her eyes, slivering out of his reach and glancing up at him. "Actually, I think I forgot you existed for a moment." She paused, seeing the surprise on his face. "It was a nice moment."

"Aww, Abby, no need to lie," Jacob leered, pinning her between him and the railing as he leaned his head in closer to her. "You were thinking about our night together. I understand. I_was_ pretty good, but I can do better."

"That was a mistake," Abigail muttered, stiffening as his lips grazed hers and tilting her head to the side. "Stop it."

Jacob grinned, his eyes surveying her as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "That's not what you were saying the other night. Actually, I think it was more like, '_More, Jacob. Harder, oh, oh, ohhhh-_"

He broke off suddenly as the bell rang, glancing toward the door and groaning. "I can't be tardy again. Old Kingsley will tell Coach Garcia that I can't play-"

"And that would be a shame," Abigail mocked sarcastically, relieved he'd shut up. She definitely didn't want everyone to know she'd had sex with Jacob Kincaid, especially not right now.

He held the door open for her, and she didn't bother to thank him as she started to head down the hallway to her locker.

A girl dashed past them, almost knocking Abigail off her feet as her backpack slammed into her arm.

"What the hell?" Jacob shouted after her, steadying Abigail as more people rushed past them, screaming. "I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the highway again."

Abigail glanced up at him in surprise at the _again_, about to ask him about it when she heard a _bang_. It sounded like a car backfiring, only louder, and tinnier, and it was definitely inside. "What was that?"

The question fell on deaf ears, though, because Jacob had turned around and fled down the hallway with the rest of them, leaving Abigail standing in the middle of the hallway alone. "So much for chivalry," she muttered, adjusting her backpack strap and trying to figure out if she should follow everyone running in the other direction or go get her books out of her locker and head to class.

There was another bang, and then another, and screams and the sound of someone falling, and then something ricocheted off a locker near hear, and bounced across the floor. _Ping. Ping. Ping_.

She frowned, ducking down to pick up the object as people continued to rush by her, pulling her hand away from it with a start as she realized what it was.

A bullet.

And then, she looked up slowly, realizing someone had stopped next to her. She saw the gun first, and slowly drew herself to her feet, her eyes locking with those of that weird guy in her history class who'd insisted their teacher call him Mr. Kessel, instead of Paul.

"Paul…" she started without knowing what to say, and then he roughly grabbed her arm, pulling her down the hall in the direction all the students had been fleeing from.

………

**March 2, 2026 - 10 AM**

"Do you really think she's gonna want to see me?" Fourteen year old Sadie Scott asked her mother as she tore a hairbrush through her thick reddish brown hair, shoving it all into a ponytail as she raised her eyebrows expectantly. "I mean, I _did_ leave her in there to like, die."

Haley paused for a minute as she considered her middle child, disturbed by what Sadie had said. "There's no way you could've known she was in there, and the only person at fault for what happened is the gunman."

"Men, Mom. They're saying there were three now," Olivia told Haley as she joined them in the kitchen, opening the fridge and leaning in, coming up a minute later with an apple. "Just saying…"

Studying the twelve year old, Haley let out a sigh, trying not to imagine what her niece must have gone through. Sadie had been lucky, able to escape within seconds of the first shot since she had already been on the way to her first class, and Olivia was still in the junior high school across town. "Which just furthers my point. You weren't the one holding the gun, Sadie, and you didn't know Abby was in there, anyway."

"Mom, she goes to my school, so I knew she was supposed to be there," Sadie pointed out with a shrug, staring in disgust at her little sister. "You're _eating?_ You're seriously eating right now, Livvie? What the hell?"

"Language!" Haley said half-heartedly, more out of habit than because she cared at the moment.

"Oh, come on, Mom. Are you really going to stress dumb things today, given everything that happened in the last day?" Sadie shook her head. "I don't think she's going to want to see me."

"The whole world revolves around Sadie, Mom, didn't you know?" Olivia returned, biting into her apple in an over exaggerated motion, clearly just to annoy her sister. "I mean, there were hundreds of kids in that building, and a bunch of Abby's friends died yesterday, but all she's thinking about is Sadie, of course."

Haley smiled a little despite herself, resisting the urge to point out the irony of Olivia claiming someone else thought they were the center of the world. Olivia, who would take it as a personal slight if a store didn't have a certain pair of pants in her size. Olivia, who'd punched her big brother James in the face when he'd dared to break his arm on _her_ first day of kindergarten. Olivia, who'd told Nathan he had to retire because it was mortifying for her dad to be the oldest guy in the NBA.

"Does she know Jacob Kincaid died?" Sadie asked suddenly, biting her bottom lip as she stared at her fingernails.

"Jacob Kincaid…" Haley rolled the name across the tip of her tongue, trying to place it. "I don't think Brooke and Lucas were going to tell her about all the people who died right away. They wanted to wait until she was a little stronger. Who's Jacob?"

Sadie paused for a second, her lips pursed, and Haley could practically see the wheels in her pretty little head turning. "Oh, he's just one of her friends. Well, he _was_ one of her friends, I guess. He was the captain of the basketball team."

"Just a friend, huh?" Haley questioned, picking up on the awkward pause and Sadie's phrasing. She hadn't followed Abby's love life all that closely as of late, since her niece seemed to have a new boyfriend every other week.

With a roll of her eyes, Sadie slipped out of her seat, heading for the door. "Yeah, Mom, just a friend. Can we get going now?

…………

Forty-six photographs littered the table in the hotel room, now separated into four categories. There were the shooters and suspected shooters, the dead, the hospitalized, and the slightly injured.

Declan Covington paused for a moment before setting his cell phone down and moving another photo from the "still alive" list to the dead. Fourteen year old Marissa Carlson had been excited to start high school two months earlier, and she'd dreamed of being a veterinarian. She'd had the grades for it, too.

This was what he'd been doing all night, learning every detail he could about these victims. Penny let out a snore at that moment, reminding him that some people in this line of work were normal, that not everyone was as affected by this as he was.

You'd think he was used to it now. He'd always covered the hard stories; the story that had provided his big break was when he spent a week with the Janjaweed in Darfur. He'd been in Darfur, he'd covered the massacre in Moscow in 2012, and the terrorist attack in Johannesburg that had claimed almost 7,000 lives five years before.

But every case got to him, even now. Every single victim had had a face, had had a life, had had goals and hopes for the future, before something senseless had ended it all.

He paused, staring at the photos in front of him and shaking his head as he consulted his notes. Parents always wanted to talk, to share how special their children had been, how they'd affected other people's lives, too.

There was Marissa Carlson.

Then there was Laura Roberts, who had been the first victim, from all accounts. She was a popular seventeen year old, had been the captain of the cheerleading squad since she was a sophomore. Her mom had spoken haltingly of Laura's plans to attend Harvard next year.

Josephine Ramirez was the daughter of immigrants, who'd boasted of her friendliness and cheerful attitude. She'd been on the swim team, and her mom had shown Declan some of the ribbons from meets she'd excelled in.

Craig Graham was Josephine's boyfriend, a year older than her at sixteen, and the police thought he'd stepped in front of her when the shooter had cornered them. He was a backstroker, like Josephine, and every night he helped his two younger brothers with homework and put them to sleep while his mother worked.

The captain of the basketball team, Jacob Kincaid, was the most popular kid in the school, and he came from a wealthy family. He'd been alive and conscious when the paramedics took him out of the school, even bragging to the EMT about how he'd struggled with that 'fucker' for a good five minutes before the gun went off. His father's publicist had issued some cookie cutter statement about how the family was 'deeply saddened' by the loss of their only son.

Caitlin Harris was an enigma to Declan at this point. Of all the student victims, she was the only one who hadn't fit into the 'popular' crowd, a loner who spent all her time studying in the library. Her dad had confided in him that when she was nine, Caitlin had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease, and that she'd fought it for a year before going into remission. After five years in remission, she'd only recently been considered 'cured.' The girl had beaten cancer only to be killed by a peer.

"Mmmph. What time is it, Dec?" Penelope's voice, soft with sleep, stirred him from his thoughts. He hadn't even realized she had awoken.

He glanced over at her as she sat up in bed, the dress shirt of his that she'd worn to bed sliding up her legs as she stretched her arms over her head and yawned. She was a beauty, definitely on the wrong side of the camera, with auburn hair and bright green eyes. It had been hard for him to take her seriously as a cameraperson at first, especially since she'd insisted on wearing skirts that, although normal in length for most women, still seemed obscenely short on her long legs.

"A little after ten. You should go get in the shower and then we'll head down to the hospital. They're holding a press conference at 11:30 to update us on the status of the injured."

Penelope got up and after a couple minutes of staring over his shoulder, disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Declan to consider the photographs again.

………

"Your throat is going to be sore for a while, but you can't have anything to drink," the doctor was telling Abigail after removing the breathing tube from her throat, as Brooke looked on anxiously to make sure Abigail was breathing alright. "We had to open you up yesterday, so between that and the bullet, your intestines and other organs are bruised or worse, so we're trying to give them a bit of a break, hence the IVs, alright?"

Abigail nodded, and Brooke ran her hands through her daughter's unwashed hair as they both looked up at the doctor.

"Alright. I'll give you some time alone with your parents, and you all know where the call button is if you need anything, and I've already shown you how to control the morphine drip." The doctor hesitated for a minute before leaving the room.

When Abigail spoke, her voice was scratchy. "Where'd Dad go?"

Brooke sighed, smiling slightly. Abigail always had been a Daddy's girl. It used to bother her so much, especially when Abigail was a baby. It was _Brooke_ who'd stay home with her all day, feeding and clothing and changing and bathing her while Lucas was out making just enough money to put food on the table and pay the rent, but when Lucas came home, Abigail's little arms would start flapping like a bird and she'd start talking excitedly to Lucas in her baby tongue, a chorus of gurgles and gahs.

"He ran downstairs to meet Haley and the girls and try to sneak them past the nurses. You said you wanted to see them earlier… do you still want to see them now, or are you too tired? If you're tired, I can tell them and they'll understand."

Now, she didn't care so much that Abigail preferred Lucas. It was hard to get caught up in that kind of thing when just last night, she hadn't been sure if her daughter would live another day.

"No, it's fine. I want to see them."

Brooke nodded, running her hands through Abigail's hair again as she studied her daughter. Abigail had Brooke's bone structure and her full lips, but she'd always been the perfect combination of both her parents.

"Good. Because they're probably going to be up here in a minute or two."

"_Thank God she has your nose,"_ Lucas had joked once Abigail was old enough that her features weren't going to change dramatically, as her hair had turned from blonde to brown.

Brooke had smiled, staring down at their sleeping daughter, and returned, _"Thank God she has your eyes."  
_


	4. Yellow Like Staring Into The Sun

Before I start this chapter, I think it's important to say that in light of recent events, my heart goes out to the victims, families, and friends affected by the campus shootings at the Northern Illinois University, Louisiana Technical College, E.O. Green Junior High School in California, Mitchell High School in Tennessee, and the Notre Dame Elementary school in Oregon. It's been an absolutely horrible and tragic week, and I hope we've all learned from these events. One shooting is too many; five in one week is ridiculous.

* * *

**Chapter Four**

Yellow. It was the color of the sun; not the vivid yellow children painted in the corner of a picture with orange lines stemming from its center as a representation for the star, but that pale, whitish yellow, the blindingly light color that your eyes first saw when you looked up at the sky on a bright day.

Abigail studied her younger cousin's shirt for a long moment, the muted shade not lost on her. Sadie, who was usually easy to spot in a crowded hallway because of her bright pink and purple shirts; Sadie, who wore white after labor day because she thought it was a happier color than blue.

The choice was obvious. "I'm not dying, am I?" Abby asked her cousin, cracking a smile for the first time since she'd realized her period was late while staring into the toilet bowl. "I always thought that the day you wore something that looked like it had actually been through the wash before, it would be for a funeral."

It was true; Sadie had insisted on hand washing all her clothing since she was eight, after her mom had accidentally left her father's brand new red shirt in the washer with a load of whites and everything had come out tinted pink, and not the hot pink Sadie liked.

Sadie didn't return Abby's smile, glancing toward the doorway to see if any of the adults were eavesdropping before returning her attention to her cousin. "No, you aren't dying, Abby. And I'm happy for that, but it's still a sad day…"

"Because a lot of people did," Abby filled in, rolling her eyes at Sadie's shocked expression. "Yeah, I know my parents are trying to protect me, but the nurses talk. When they think I'm asleep, they talk about how _lucky_ I am, about how so many people died, how it's a real tragedy." She wanted to laugh, but she'd tried that earlier and the pain that had radiated from her stomach had left her in tears. "Lucky," she repeated dubiously, shaking her head slightly.

With a pause, Sadie studied her cousin with pursed lips, glancing back at the door before crawling up onto the corner of Abby's bed with a sigh. "A lot of people died," she confirmed softly, her gaze dropping to study the pattern on Abby's hospital gown in an attempt to avoid Abby's probing blue eyes. "A _lot_ of people, Abby, and there's some people in comas and no one knows if they're gonna make it. There's going to be a press conference soon."

"Mom and Dad didn't want me to know; they think I'm too weak or something," Abby shook her head. "I already knew, Sadie. I was there. I saw it."

Sadie flinched, obviously not comfortable even imagining what Abby had been exposed to in her hours as Paul Kessell's personal hostage. "Yeah. I know."

Abby paused for a minute, opening her mouth to speak again and then closing it, not sure she wanted to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. "How many?" she asked after a long pause, but it wasn't what she wanted to know. She wanted to know _who_ had survived and who hadn't; she'd seen Paul Kessell and the others singling out her friends.

A long, hard gaze. Then Sadie spoke, her voice barely audible. "Forty-six were shot, including Paul. The SWAT team killed him after you collapsed outside. It-it was on the news."

"And how many were dead?" Abby gulped.

Mirroring her expression, Sadie met Abby's eyes seriously. "On the way to the hospital, the radio said twenty-eight. I'm not sure if it's right."

"It is," Abby told her cousin with a sad smile. "They wouldn't report a kid's death unless they were sure."

-

-

-

It had been hard for Brooke to leave her daughter's side, but Haley had pointed out that Abby and Sadie had gone through something together, that Abby could open up to Sadie like she couldn't with her parents, and that maybe she _needed_ that. And remembering back to her own experiences dealing with the aftermath of the shooting twenty years ago, that had been all Brooke needed to join Lucas, Nathan, Haley and Olivia in the Intensive Care Unit's waiting room, at least for a few minutes.

Now, she was starting to get antsy again. "It's been a while. Do you think she's okay?" Brooke paced nervously across the room, her gaze sweeping over Lucas' face, and then Nathan's, and finally Haley's.

Haley sighed and stood up, walking over to Brooke and putting a hand on her back as Brooke continued to pace. "Sadie would've gotten us if anything was wrong, Brooke," she pointed out calmly, wondering if she'd be any more rational than Brooke if it was one of her children in the hospital being treated for a gunshot wound at the moment.

"Yeah. Yeah, she would've," Brooke realized, slowing a little as she acknowledged Haley's presence, biting her bottom lip and studying the woman who'd once been her best friend.

It was strange for Brooke, to be back in Tree Hill. Hell, she hadn't seen her daughter in almost three months, and she certainly hadn't expected that the next time she'd see Abby, she'd be in a hospital bed. Or that the next time she'd see Lucas, she'd end up curled up in his arms as she had the previous night, the past four years of distance forgotten.

And with Haley, the once familiarity of old friends was almost gone, as it was only natural that family friends needed to choose sides after a divorce. Lucas was family to Haley and Nathan, more so than she was, and he'd been friends with Haley longer, so he'd 'kept' them in the divorce.

For her part, Haley had tried to keep their friendship going, but Brooke had realized it was causing strain, that it was putting Haley in a place she didn't deserve to be in, so they'd fallen out of touch over time. Brooke would 'forget' to return Haley's phone calls, or be too busy to visit when Haley would suggest they get together.

If there was one thing Brooke had discovered in the past four years of living in New York, it was that Tree Hill was her life. Her family, her friendships, her _world _was all located in Tree Hill, but she'd taken too many wrong turns to ever really return.

The first two months in New York, she was able to convince herself that this was for the best, that she'd love her life in New York, that she'd be happy. For the six months after that, her mantra had changed. _'I'll get used to this,'_ she'd think, _'Change is hard, but this is what I needed to do. I needed this change.'_

But after that, she'd abandoned the mantra, crying herself to sleep and wishing she could erase all the things she'd said to Lucas when she was angry, all her inebriated mistakes and weary nonchalance. She wished she hadn't given him an ultimatum, that she'd fought for her marriage the way she should've, that she hadn't packed up all her stuff and moved out, that she hadn't let fate win.

But it didn't matter, because what was done was done, and real life didn't give you second or third chances, or whatever number Brooke was on with Lucas.

When she spoke to Abby on the phone a year, two months, and six days after she'd moved out, and Abby had told her haltingly that her father had gone on a date, that he'd gone on a date with _her_ and that Abby couldn't stand her anymore, Brooke had felt her heart break into a million pieces, and she'd felt like she was back in high school again. She'd pretended not to be affected, for Abby's sake, because really, what kind of mother would she be if she had her daughter consoling _her?_

But secretly, she wondered if she really was still stuck in high school, because the man she'd married certainly was.

-

-

-

"Explain to me again why I bothered to do my makeup when I'm not even gonna be in front of the camera," Penny complained to Declan as she trotted behind him into the press room at the hospital, pursing her lips and blowing an annoyed 'pffft' of air from between them.

Declan shrugged, not bothering to glance over his shoulder at her. "Because you're vain," he taunted, knowing it would set her off.

"I am _not_ vain!" Penny hissed as they rounded the corner into the room, her voice lowering as she saw all the people already gathered there. "I- I just like to look decent."

"Uh-huh." He wasn't really paying attention to her, his gaze sweeping over the photographs that had been set up in the front of the room- class photos and family portraits littered the wall alike. "Pan across those," Declan instructed her, taking a deep breath. "When you do close-ups of the photos, choose them randomly. Don't go across the line, like you're reading something structured. This is chaos, these were lives. They don't make for some neat little line up on a wall."

Penny sighed but didn't disagree, setting to work. "Yeah, alright."

Declan watched her walk across the room and interact with some of the other camera people already up near the front before adding CNN's microphone to the already overflowing mic stand on the empty podium. Then he took a seat toward the back of the room, his gaze sweeping over the photos once again.

He'd already taken a lot of notes, sucking up every detail he could about the victims even though he knew most of it would never make the air. It was what he did, though, to deal with tragedy. Too many journalists moved from one disaster to the next, unfazed, and he couldn't do that. Someone had to remember these broken families, the names of the innocent children who'd lost their lives because they went to school on the wrong day.

There was a shuffle at the door, and Declan glanced over his shoulder to see the blonde man who'd broken free from the crowd when Abigail Scott was shot, who he now knew was the successful author Lucas Scott. Surreptitiously glancing around the room to see if any of the other newscasters had noticed him, Declan slipped out of his chair and met Lucas at the door.

"I wouldn't go in there if I were you," he warned, giving the blonde man a small smile. Lucas was probably a decade younger than Declan, but today he looked so much older. Declan had seen it often; just hours of extreme stress, especially when it was a child's life hanging in the balance, aged a person like nothing else.

He liked to blame his graying hair on that.

"Huh?" Lucas looked confused, blue eyes so much like his daughter's, cloudy.

"You're Abigail Scott's father, right? The reporters in there will eat you alive." Declan paused, shrugging. "Declan Covington. CNN."

"Oh, yeah… I was just looking for a vending machine. My wife- ex-wife- she wanted a water."

Declan nodded, studying Lucas for a minute. He knew he should be prying, asking for information on Abigail Scott or hell, even Brooke Davis or if Lucas had plans for his next book. But instead, all he could bring himself to say was, "I think I saw a vending machine down the hall when I came in. I'll show you where."

-

-

-

Abby had always been independent, so even with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, she'd quickly tired of her parents hovering over her. After Sadie had left, she'd spent about half an hour talking to her mother before feigning tiredness and insisting on getting some sleep.

Since then, Brooke had sat perched in the chair across the room, so Abby had to actually keep her eyes closed and regulate her breathing so it seemed like she was really asleep.

She'd stopped pressing the button for morphine every time something hurt, so the pain in her stomach had been intensifying over the past couple hours, but for now having the ability to think was worth the sacrifice.

Her mind was racing as she tried to recount the events of the previous day, tried to remember who'd been shot and who had managed to escape. Names and faces were a blur, though, and those she could remember being shot, she wasn't sure if their injuries had been serious.

Frowning slightly at the pain searing through her stomach, Abby remembered how she'd been waiting for Ian Parker outside of school when Jacob Kincaid had joined her, and of course she wasn't going to _admit_ to Jacob that she was waiting for Ian Parker like the lovesick teenage girl she really was.

So Ian hadn't been in the school when the gun went off. That was good, at least. Maybe Ian was safe. Regardless of her crush on him, he was her best friend first and foremost, and she wasn't sure if she would want to live if he couldn't.

She'd been shot in the stomach. The previous morning, she'd been so, so scared of telling her father about the positive result on a home pregnancy test, and now it didn't matter. If she really had been pregnant, she wasn't anymore.

Babies couldn't survive bullets, and from what the doctors had told her, the bullet had torn all the way into one of her kidneys. She hadn't paid all that much attention in Anatomy and Physiology, but she knew where her kidneys were. They were closer to her back than her belly, so the bullet must have torn through everything, including the baby.

She sniffled, a single tear slipping down her cheek as she considered it. She'd been scared to death about having a baby, unsure of what to do, and in all honesty, she hadn't ruled out an abortion.

But still, there was a huge difference between signing a piece of paper and agreeing to terminate a pregnancy and having the baby _shot_ out of your system.

Her eyes still closed, Abby tried to will herself to sleep, sure even the nightmares she'd been having couldn't be as scary as reality right now.


	5. Umber Like Her Hair

**Chapter Five**

Umber. It was the shade Lucas and Brooke had decided on after much debate to describe Abby's hair color, neither red nor brown but somewhere in between. Auburn, Brooke had suggested, but Lucas had shaken his head and told her that was _too_ red, that it wasn't accurate.

The problem with marrying a writer, Brooke had found, was that he wanted to define everything, mulled over vocabulary until he found the perfect word for any given situation.

Burnt umber, Lucas had explained to her, was a natural pigment, a color found in nature and not out of a bottle. It was real, and vibrant, yet reserved and pure at the same time. The strawberry blonde natural highlights that stood out in Abby's hair after spending time in the sun could be explained with the description of "umber," just as the lowlights that tinted her hair reddish.

Brooke had found Abby's baby book in Lucas' office, displayed proudly with other albums they'd compiled of Abby's childhood- her first report card of all A's, the certificate she'd been awarded for her kindness when she played softball, even pieces of the fiberglass cast she'd had after toppling off the seawall by the beach. It was all the little things only a parent could understand the importance of, the fabric of moments that only they could find truly significant.

Drawing her legs up onto Lucas' computer chair and hugging her knees to her chest, Brooke ran her fingers over a lock of umber hair in Abby's baby book, tied together with a pale pink ribbon. Abby's hair was almost the same exact shade now as it had been when she was an infant, maybe a teensy bit darker.

Squeezing her eyes shut as she fingered the single tuft of hair, the image that kept returning to Brooke's mind wasn't that of the giggly, chubby baby that she'd clipped the piece of hair from. Instead, she envisioned her teenage daughter, lonely and scared and upset in the hospital, awake in the middle of the night.

"Hey." Lucas' voice cut into her thoughts and she swiveled around to look at him, instinctively dropping her feet to the floor, her expression guilty. Even after years of separation, she could still remember his love for the old chair and how he'd nag her not to put her feet on it.

_"You've had it since we were in college," she'd respond with a roll of her eyes, glancing down at the chair in disgust. "For God's sake, Luke, it's puke green! We should trash it, not worry about getting footprints on it!"_

But then he'd remind her of why he loved that chair so much- of all the nights in college when he'd recline the chair all the way and she'd crawl on top of him, both their bodies warm and naked- and she'd relent.

But tonight, he didn't seem to even notice she'd had her feet on the chair, and Brooke idly wondered if he even cared about it anymore. "Hey," she returned softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

He looked exhausted, and with good reason- it was past two in the morning, and neither had really slept since before the shooting over forty hours ago. There were bags under his eyes, and he wore boxer shorts and a wrinkled T-shirt Brooke suspected he'd picked up off the floor or pulled out of the hamper.

"I knew it was hard for you to leave once visiting hours were over," Lucas shrugged, his gaze searching her face. "I went up to check on you, and you weren't in bed." He'd agreed to sleep on the couch for the time being, insisting she stay in the house instead of at some hotel. They'd reached an unspoken agreement of sorts, coexisting to benefit their daughter. All the drama between them seemed petty at the moment, but Brooke wasn't sure when the awkwardness would return full force.

"Yeah," she nodded slightly, setting the baby book down on Lucas' desk before glancing back up at him. "I was looking through it… did you ever notice neither of us ever filled in the page for what her name means completely? There's blank spaces."

Lucas was silent as he crossed the room and leaned over her shoulder, opening the baby book and flipping into the page in question. "That's because you said it would be impossible to put into words everything Abigail meant to you, because-"

"It wasn't just a name. It was an idea, a wish. A life," Brooke finished quietly, biting her bottom lip as she looked up at Lucas, her gaze sad. "Maybe that's where we went wrong. Taking things for granted, assuming we'd never forget what they meant…"

"But we didn't," he returned, his own voice equally soft, and as their gazes searched one another's it was clear they were talking about more than just the significance behind Abigail's name.

"That couch is lumpy," Brooke spoke up after a long moment, taking a deep breath before climbing up from the chair and offering Lucas her hand. "We can share the bed."

-

-

-

Abby had always found nighttime to be the loneliest hours of the day, especially the nights right after her mother had left, when she'd lay awake in bed and know her father was downstairs, pouring his emotions into a masterpiece that would never get published, but that she couldn't go down there and catch him at it.. Writing was what Lucas did when he was upset, and Abby had learned as a child to pretend she didn't know that.

She'd thought nothing could be worse than the nights following her mom's departure, but tonight was proving that to be false. Nighttime in the hospital was something beyond lonely; it was _desolate._ Her room was chilly, and it smelled of disinfectants and medicine. The hall outside was dimly lit, and occasionally she'd hear footsteps or a door swinging open as someone on the night staff went about their job. Her room wasn't big, but the lack of furniture and carpeting made it seem that way; at one point, she'd coughed, and there had been an actual echo.

What made this loneliness unbearable, though, was that there was no one and nothing to distract her from her thoughts. Alone with her mind, Abby kept reconstructing the events of the shooting, trying to remember who she'd seen in the hallway before encountering Paul Kessell, and who she'd seen later.

Forty-six was the number the nurses were saying now, but Abby was clueless as to what it meant. Was it forty-six dead? Forty-six wounded? Forty-six total? Did it include the gunmen? Sadie's report earlier, which hadn't even been at thirty, had included the gunmen.

Gun_men._ Try as she may, Abby couldn't identify the other faces she'd seen talking to Paul, or even how many had spoken with him. They'd all donned the same ski mask- one, ironically, she recognized from last year's winter trip to Killington, Vermont. She'd only recognized one of their voices, and she couldn't even place it.

She'd learned from the news and television shows that it was usually the outcasts that committed this kind of crime, that killed at all. Until two days ago, when she'd found herself looking down the barrel of a gun, she'd thought that meant Tree Hill High was the least likely place to get shot up. After all, the school referenced the Jimmy Edwards shooting every year in a special assembly, and preached tolerance and respect and friendship. She really hadn't realized that there _were_ outcasts at Tree Hill High.

But looking into Paul Kessell's eyes as he asked her what grade she'd first noticed him in, she'd realized how very wrong she was.

And when she couldn't think of an answer, because he'd always been there but she'd never really _noticed,_ she started to wonder if she deserved what was happening.

-

-

-

After years of working with Declan, reading his moods and instinctively knowing when he needed to be alone came naturally to Penny. So when she found herself sitting alone in a dark hotel lobby at nearly three in the morning during a particularly hard story, it wasn't such a rare occurrence that she found herself surprised anymore.

What did surprise her, though, was the sharp ring that broke the comfortable silence, high pitched and repetitive. Not the type of person to normally be up at three in the morning and already overtired, it took Penny a minute to realize the ringing was her cell phone. Pulling it out of her pocket, she studied the Caller ID display box.

_Atlanta_, it read, and with a groan she realized that this was something she should be getting used to, too. "Penny LeBlanc," she answered, her voice gruff with annoyance and lack of sleep.

She heard the tinny background noises she'd long since associated with the CNN Headquarters before her boss, Byron Richardson, began to speak. "Penelope, there was excellent video coverage as usual during the press conference," he started, and Penny's mouth formed the "but" before he'd said it. "But I couldn't help but notice a complete lack of audio, aside from what was picked up by the mic on the podium. In fact, I didn't hear Declan's voice at all. Actually, there's a rumor circulating the networks that he _skipped_ out on the conference all together, but that couldn't be true, right?"

Pausing, Penny imagined Declan upstairs in their hotel room, pacing back and forth and feeling guilty because he couldn't remember if it was Marissa Carlson or Laura Roberts who'd been 5'2". Like it even mattered. "It is true," she murmured, since Byron would inevitably find out anyway. The other thing that she'd become incredibly good at since she started working with Declan was damage control. Her mind worked furiously to give Declan's absence a positive spin.

There was a loud sigh, and a frustrated pause, and then Bryon's voice, softer than usual, was asking, "Penny, do you think we need to pull him off this case? I know you weren't around for the Reijt bombings…"

"With all dear respect, I heard about them, sir, and I heard about what happened with Declan, and I don't think it's going to happen again," Penny interrupted quickly. Almost all international correspondents hit a stone wall eventually, found themselves in the middle of a situation they couldn't emotionally handle, but Declan Covington was the only one she knew of who'd hit that wall on a live broadcast.

"So you don't think he needs to be pulled from the case," Byron stated, his tone dubious at best.

"No, sir, I certainly don't." Penny paused for just a second, realizing now was when she needed to find her hook, to make Byron feel like if he pulled Declan, he'd miss CNN's biggest break. "Sir, Declan missed the conference because he lined up an interview with a victim's father… the girl the whole world saw get shot?"

"Except CNN viewers," Bryon reminded her, and Penny had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him it was doubtful many people were so loyal to one news network they didn't flip back and forth.

"Right. Well, Mr. Richardson… Abby Scott's father is a bestselling author, and her mom's a fashion designer… to the stars, sir. A fashion designer to the stars." Penny wasn't even sure it was true, but the more she lied the deeper into it she found herself. "Declan's secured himself an interview with the Davis-Scott family."

Oh, he was going to kill her. He was definitely going to kill her.

-

-

-

Brooke was snoring. Back when they'd been married, Brooke had occasionally snored when she'd had a cold- light, soft snores Lucas would only hear if he was paying attention. These snores definitely weren't the same. They were loud, almost irritatingly so, and didn't sound like she had a stuffy nose or sore throat.

Wondering idly if Brooke always snored like this now, or if it was because of how overtired she was, Lucas studied her as she lay next to him in the bed. She'd turned over in her sleep about ten minutes earlier, facing him now, and any sense of modesty or decorum had disappeared in her sleep, one leg arching over his thigh. She'd cuddled into him as well, sharing the warmth of his body.

She looked _fragile._ She never really looked innocent, even in her sleep; Lucas had long since realized that there was nothing innocent about Brooke Davis. He'd tricked himself into believing it for a while, but on some level, he'd always known.

Then she'd left, and there was no pretending anymore. He remembered that day vividly, and the night before it.

_She was standing over their bed when he came home, fingers trailing over the fabric of the quilt they'd received as a wedding gift from Karen. He noticed the gray droplets on the quit, wet and round, before he noticed the tears on her cheeks and pooling below her eyes. _

_"Remember the day we got married?" she'd asked, and Lucas was caught off guard, not realizing she'd even registered his presence. Before he had a chance to respond, though, she continued, "Abby was two and a half, and I remember being so, so worried about getting her hair just perfect that I missed my own appointment at the salon. And you came in, and you took Abby from me, and told me that she'd look perfect even if she got gum stuck in her hair because she was our daughter and she was just a baby and she was a part of us." _

_Lucas had nodded, memories flooding his mind. "But it just freaked you out more, because all you could focus on was that I'd seen you before the wedding, and you had your dress on, and that was a bad omen. So I put Abby on my hip, and I pulled you to me with my other arm and held both of my girls, and I told you it didn't matter, that-" _

_"That we created our own fate, that as long as we held each other tight, no one or nothing, including some dumb superstition, would have the room to come between us," she'd finished, looking up at him. "When did we let go?" _

_He'd pulled her into his arms, kissing her in response, trying to show her that he'd never, ever let go of her, and he didn't plan to. And when they'd made love that night, it had been desperate and intense. _

The next morning, though, she was gone, and there was a post-it note on his office desk saying she needed some time to figure things out. Ever since, Lucas had wondered if she'd wanted him to say something, if he'd lost his chance to salvage his marriage and his family by making love to his wife instead of _telling_ her he loved her.

But tonight, he could hold her and not let go until the morning, and that's what he intended to do. Wrapping an arm around her back and pulling her closer, Lucas laid a light kiss on his ex-wife's forehead and closed his eyes, soon falling into a light sleep.

-

-

-

Even in the past twenty-four hours, so much had changed. It had been just over a day ago, a little after midnight the previous night, when the media had first gotten wind that nineteen victims were dead, and thirteen remained in critical condition. Now, Declan found himself staring at a completely different list. Of the thirteen who were in critical condition the previous night, only four still lived.

The odds were staggering. Usually, in his line of work, most of the patients admitted in critical condition eventually recovered somewhat, even if they'd never function quite the same. The difference this time, he had to keep reminding himself, was the response time.

Paul Kessell and his accomplices had walked into that high school, trigger happy, slightly before 8 in the morning. By the time the situation had been neutralized and the EMTs were able to bring the wounded out of the building, people on their lunch break had tuned in to watch the news coverage.

That meant there was over four hours for these kids to bleed out, to expire from injuries that may have been treatable in other circumstances. How many of these children, dead at fourteen or fifteen or sixteen or seventeen, would have been alive today if they hadn't had to wait for help for so long?

Declan frowned, his pen circling idly on the notebook he'd opened as he considered his conversation with Lucas Scott earlier. They'd ended up talking for almost an hour as they sat next to a vending machine, munching on Cheez-Its and gummy bears. Ironic, Lucas had pointed out, that health care facilities always had machines packed with unhealthy food.

Abigail Scott would survive, but she'd lost a kidney and nearly all of the organs in her abdomen had been torn or bruised. She'd be on a liquid diet for at least a couple weeks since her intestines and stomach wouldn't be able to handle the tasks of breaking up and carrying food through her body.

Had she made it to the hospital even ten minutes later, the prognosis wouldn't be so good. Lucas had told him haltingly of a surgeon's predictions- another ten minutes, and his sixteen year old daughter would've had a permanent colostomy. Twenty minutes, and the bleeding would've been too much. She would've been declared DOA.

It turned out that even though Abigail Scott had been held hostage for hours inside that building and probably witnessed many of her friends being shot, she was "lucky" to have been shot at the tail end of the spree.

Luck, Declan had realized within the first week of international correspondence, was relative.

-

-

-

_"Our first class together was Honors Algebra, in the eighth grade," Paul Kessell informs her angrily, the hand his gun is in shaking so badly that she fears he'll drop it accidentally and it will go off. "But I noticed you in the seventh grade, after Jacob Kincaid slammed me up against a locker and you just watched. After he walked away, you **mouthed** sorry to me, but wouldn't even say it aloud. Like you couldn't condescend to actually speak to me." He's brought her into the tutoring center, the same room she knows her Aunt Haley and Uncle Nathan found themselves in twenty years earlier. _

_"I'm sorry," Abby whimpers, a tear slipping down her cheek as she presses her back into the wall she's sitting against, as if trying to get further away from the gun. "I- I was scared," she admits after a slight hesitation. _

_God, it all seems so stupid now. She was scared of her popular friends thinking she was a loser, scared that the thin façade she'd built around herself to fit in with Laura Roberts and Tiffany Harrington and Jacob Kincaid would crumble if she so much as smiled at the wrong person. _

_And now Laura and Tiffany and maybe even Jacob, they were all probably dead, or being held hostage like she is. To think that if she'd just told Jacob to stop when he was bullying someone, or told Laura it really wasn't funny when she told that dorky kid in the back row of their English class that Tiffany was crushing on him, just to see him embarrass himself, that maybe this wouldn't be happening? It all seemed so, so stupid. _

_"Scared of what?" Paul asks her, pulling off his ski mask and glaring at her. "You weren't the one being shoved against a locker! You weren't the one who couldn't shower in the locker room because some asshole would always steal your towel or your clothes! You weren't the one who had to go home with bruises and cuts and listen to your dad tell you to suck it up and be a man!" _

_A tear slips down Abby's cheek and she sniffles, not sure how to respond. It seems so dumb to tell Paul the truth, to tell him she was scared of being like him. That she'd rather watch idly as her friends teased and taunted less popular classmates than risk having them turn on her. _

_"I'm weak," she says instead, wondering if he'll understand that explanation, and meaning every word of it, "I'm a weak person. I'm not good at confrontation. I wanted to stand up to them, I really did. But I thought that if I did, Paul, that if I-" _

_"MR. KESSELL!" his voice booms, and he points the gun at her again. "I have a gun on you, and you still won't give me the fucking respect I deserve! It's Mr. Kessell to you!" _

_Abby gulps and nods, sinking down lower on the floor as she stares into the barrel of the gun, taking a deep breath. "Mr. Kessell, right. I'm sorry." _

_Before she has a chance to say anything else, the door to the student center is thrust open with so much force she lets herself believe for a split second that it's the SWAT team and she's rescued. But then she sees Jacob Kincaid being thrust into the room by two men- they stopped being boys the second they pulled guns on their peers- and they're both in masks. _

_"Are you gonna kill her?" the second asks Paul, his voice nervous and oddly familiar, and Abby wonders if he, too, is in one of her classes. _

_"Not yet. I think we should have **her** kill him, though," Paul responds with a laugh, gesturing his gun at Jacob. _

_Jacob's eyes lock with Abby's, and the fear Abby sees in them makes her feel sick to her stomach. Before she even has a chance to process what's happening, she's tilting her head to the side and the contents of her stomach are on the floor next to her._

Abby awoke with a start, her stomach burning and her ears ringing, slowly processing that someone was screaming. So caught up in memories of her nightmare- which, in all reality, was more a memory than a nightmare itself- it takes her a moment to realize the scream is coming from deep within her own throat.


	6. Black Like His Eyes When They Made Love

**Chapter Six**

Black. The dictionary definition implied that black was the absence of all color, dark and moody and depressing. To Brooke, though, black had always been the color of the cute little dress that served as a centerpiece to her wardrobe, the color of Lucas's eyes when they'd made love, the color of the paint dripping down Abby's bedroom walls shortly before her twelfth birthday, when her parents had started fighting. There was so much _life_ in black that she couldn't imagine it being the absence of anything.

Brooke studied the bedspread covering the bed she'd once shared with Lucas, really _shared_ with him as opposed to just spending the night on it, wishing Lucas would hurry up and finish getting ready. He was her ride to the hospital, and she wanted to be there as soon as visiting hours started.

The bedspread was black, with thick gray stripes. Or maybe it was gray with thick black stripes. Regardless, it was depressing, and nothing like the happy quilts she used to make their bed with. It seemed cheaply made, too. Untucking the end and turning over the bottom right corner, Brooke froze as she read the tag. _TARGET,_ it read, but it was what was scrawled under it that made her blood boil.

_Love Peyton, _with the "love" represented by a drawing of a heart.

_Love Peyton_, like it was some simple, innocent declaration. Like that heart wasn't what had torn apart her marriage in the first place. Or, at least, it had played a part in it.

Where _was_ Peyton? Brooke found herself wondering idly about the other girl's whereabouts. Peyton had claimed to have such a strong love for Lucas all those years ago, saying she'd always be by his side. Brooke found it somewhat ironic that Lucas' perfect little girlfriend wasn't by his side when he needed her most, when his daughter was injured.

"She bought it for me a couple months after you left."

Brooke jumped at the sound of Lucas' voice, her breath hitching in her chest despite herself as she took in his form standing in the doorway, a towel slung around his waist and water dripping down his bare chest. Most men used nearing forty as an excuse to let their bodies go, but it was clear Lucas was an exception.

If anything, he was stronger and more muscular than he'd been the last time she'd seen his naked figure.

Swallowing in an attempt to get rid of the lump that had grown in her throat, Brooke just nodded distractedly as he continued.

"I couldn't sleep in that bed after you left, Brooke. I just… I couldn't. The sheets, the blankets, even the mattress- it all smelled like you. Whenever I'd start to doze off, I'd wake up thinking you were back, that you were in bed with me. I'd reach out for you, and my arm would fall against the mattress. I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep."

Brooke bit her bottom lip, the '_ Love Peyton'_ on the tag still all too fresh in her memory. "It seems like you found yourself a way to get a good night's sleep pretty fast," she pointed out dryly, standing up. "I guses the best way to get rid of my scent was to replace it with hers, right?"

Lucas shot her a puzzled look, running a hand through his damp hair in frustration. Droplets of glistening water slid down his chest and under the towel, or fell to the floor. Brooke licked her lips subconsciously.

"Peyton was a good _friend_ after you left me," Lucas returned, stressing the word friend. "But that's all she was, Brooke. I made the choice between the two of you years ago."

She wanted to confront him, to tell him she knew all about his date, that Abby knew, too, but…. _Abby._ It wasn't about her and Lucas; it was about their daughter. "Then maybe you should've made sure our daughter got that memo," Brooke told him coldly, picking up the handbag she'd dropped on the bed and starting to walk out of the room. "Hurry up. I'll wait in the car."

-

The knock was so quiet, tentative, that Abigail thought she'd imagined it. No one knocked on her door, anyway. Her mom, her dad, her cousins- they all just let themselves in. Glancing up slowly, her head heavy with the painkillers the doctors had prescribed, Abigail's gaze fell on a petite blonde woman, so small she seemed almost diminutive. She had a foggy recollection of this woman, but for the life of her she couldn't place her. Abigail found herself growing upset that she couldn't remember who she was.

"Hi Abigail." Her voice was soft and almost nervous, and so oddly familiar. "Can I come in?"

Attempting to shrug, Abigail winced as her IV protested against the movement, her arm stinging. "Um, yeah, sure," she murmured, nodding her head for the woman to enter the room.

"I'm Jacob's mother. We met a few times, at the games and banquets," the woman filled in, her lips attempting to curve up in a wobbly smile that didn't meet her dark eyes, accentuated by heavy gray bags.

Swallowing, Abigail tried to block out the memory that had come to her half-asleep, tried to block out what had followed, as she looked at Jacob's mom. "I know who are you," she told the woman, and the prompting had brought her memory back. There wasn't really a family resemblance; Jacob's hair was almost black and his eyes an icy blue, and he stood at 6'3. Or he had.

"Jacob-" Mrs. Kincaid took a deep breath, her gaze scanning Abigail's face. "Jacob didn't make it," she told Abby, her voice breaking as she spoke. "He was alive when the paramedics got to him, but the damage- it was just too much."

What little color Abigail's skin had faded as she listened to the broken woman. She and Jacob were far from friends, but once upon a time not so long ago they had been. It seemed so stupid now, so stupid that she'd been so worried about Jacob telling Ian about their stupid, drunken night together. She'd thought it would ruin her life. "I- I'm so sorry." And she was. Jacob hadn't deserved this. None of them had.

"Oh, honey, it wasn't your fault," Mrs. Kincaid told her assuredly, hesitating for a couple seconds before approaching her bedside. Her hand trembled as she reached out, laying a hand on Abigail's forehead and brushing hair off her forehead. "Jacob spoke so highly of you, Abigail. I just- I know he'd want me here. It's hard, but Jacob would want me looking out for his friends. He'd want to know you were alright."

Somehow Abigail doubted that. It wasn't exactly something she could tell Mrs. Kincaid, though, or explain. Truth be told, she was afraid to. "That's Jacob for you," Abigail agreed, her voice a whisper. "Always looking out for other people."

Okay, so _that_ definitely wasn't true. Even when Jacob had been one of her closest friends, he'd never been someone Abby would've trusted her life with. But Abby knew it was what his mom needed to hear, and the truth didn't really matter anymore.

-

Where the hell was his other shoe? Lucas hopped around the bedroom like an idiot as he tried to get his heel the rest of the way into the shoe, his gaze scanning the room for its match. Brooke was going to kill him; she'd been waiting in the car for nearly fifteen minutes.

Spotting a flash of dark brown peeking out from beneath the comforter, Lucas dropped to his knees, fishing out the shoe. A shrill ringing interrupted the recovery, and Lucas frowned. Answering the phone could mean making Brooke wait longer, and he knew that wasn't a good idea given her frosty behavior that morning.

But it could also be Abby or someone else at the hospital, and it could be important. Even vital. It was times like this he wished he'd shelled out the 80 to get the CallerID screen replaced after Abby had broken it a year ago.

Grabbing the phone, he started to say, "Hello?" before he even had it all the way up to his ear.

"Lucas Eugene Scott!"

His stomach dropped at his mother's voice; he could tell she was both angry and anxious in just those few words. "Ma, I tried to call the other night, but-"

"Haley got through this morning," Karen cut him off, the anxiety much more evident in her voice than the anger the more she spoke. "God, Luke, if I wasn't so worried about my granddaughter, you'd be in for a lecture like you've never heard before-"

Karen may have been eligible for membership in AARP for a few years now, but she still packed a punch and was capable of scaring her grown son into behaving better. "Yeah, I know, Ma. I tried to get through to Lilly, too, but she's so hard to track down. She was in Monaco two days ago, and now she's in Spain or Portugal or somewhere. I just- I've been preoccupied."

Heaving a sigh, Karen cut to the point. "How is Abby? We can make small talk later- I already purchased a plane ticket and we'll be back in Tree Hill late tonight."

Nodding even though Karen couldn't see him, Lucas explained, "She's going to be okay. She had a lot of internal injuries- she lost a lot of blood, and they had to remove one of her kidneys, but they think she'll heal completely. That she'll be fine."

He heard her relieved exhalation long before she spoke, and when she finally did, her question surprised him. "And how is Brooke? How are you _and_ Brooke? I know it's been a long time, Luke, and I know there's a lot of history there-"

"We're fine, Ma," Lucas interrupted, and he hoped it was true. He wasn't really sure anymore; he wasn't really sure about anything. "It just… it's like we're in a time loop or something. An alternate universe. Abby's all that matters right now, you know?"

There was a long pause, and then Karen spoke again. "Lucas," she started, her voice slow, steady, and commanding. "Your marriage to Brooke may have ended years ago, but your bond is a lifetime. She's the mother of your child, and she needs you right now. You need her, too. It's not easy to put the past in the past, I know, but she's the only one who knows what you're going through right now, and you're the only one who can understand how she feels. You need each other, and Abby needs both of you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Blinking, Lucas nodded again. "Yeah… yeah, I do." Taking a deep breath, he rolled his eyes upward at the ceiling, as if hoping for divine intervention. Or at least advice. "Speaking of… I have to go, Mom. Brooke's waiting in the car. I'll see you soon?"

-

Hovering over a kitchen counter and staring into the green tea she'd finished making, Diane Parker was at a loss for how to proceed. She'd always considered herself a decent mother; she'd made her mistakes but they mostly amounted to putting her kid on the school bus in second grade without his homework assignment and similarly minor offenses. But this? This was so far over her head. For the first time in the twenty-two years she'd been a mother, she didn't know how to help her son.

With two sons already in college, one aiming to be a doctor and the other a lawyer, Diane had always felt Ian would be the easiest. She had the routine down, and she knew where the boundaries with teenage boys were. She knew when to be a mom, when to be a friend, and when to pretend she didn't know her son (really any time she 'had' to be in public with one of her boys).

Ian was supposed to be the easy one. Of her three boys, Ian had always been the most laidback, the most friendly, the most motivated. By the time he'd reached junior high school, Ian had begun to set his alarm for earlier than the rest of the family, and when Diane woke up, her youngest son would have the coffee made and breakfast cooked. He was the dream child.

He'd never been into video games, and he didn't watch much television. So the fact that Ian had been sitting in front of the television, tuned into CNN, for the past two days straight? The fact that he barely ever seemed to blink, and he hadn't slept, and when she tried to make conversation with him, he didn't seem to even realize she was in the room? It had her panicked.

Abigail Scott was going to be alright, thank God. Ian and Abigail had been friends since they were little; the first time she remembered them playing was in kindergarten. Ian was a shy child, and Abigail had approached him when she'd noticed him playing in the sandbox all alone. They'd balanced each other out. Abigail was the yin to Ian's yang, or maybe the yang to Ian's yin. Their friendship was fluid, and they seemed to switch roles constantly. Diane didn't want to imagine what Ian would be like if Abigail hadn't made it.

Picking up the two cups of tea she'd made, Diane walked into the living room, sitting down in silence next to her youngest son and placing a mug in front of him on the coffee table. She watched him for a few moments, not saying a word, until he finally acknowledged the mug and took a sip.

"I think we should go visit Abigail," Diane told her son gently. "I think she could use her best friend, and I think you would benefit from seeing her."

Ian just blinked and stared at the television.

-

Whenever Penny LeBlanc screwed up, she regressed. It was like she was back in high school, and Declan was a boss she'd wronged. "Don't hate me," she'd always start, and she'd scrape her teeth nervously over her bottom lip as her eyes flitted over his face.

So when she'd approached him in the hotel room, her expression nervous, and said "Don't hate me" in lieu of a morning greeting, a sick feeling had settled over Declan's stomach.

Glancing up from the pictures and sticky notes he'd been studying, he searched her eyes, the green darker than usual, for a clue as to what she'd done this time. "Penny…" he started with a sigh, unnerved by the way she was shifting from one foot to the other, a ball of nervous energy.

"OkaysoIkindofmessedupandgotyouintoastickysituation," Penny said quickly, tongue darting out over her lips as her gaze dropped to the floor.

Declan blinked, accustomed to Penny's fast pace. "What do you mean you got me into a sticky situation?" he questioned as soon as his brain had separated the words. Usually, Penny's mistakes were more along the lines of accidentally filming over footage or putting additional charges on their hotel bill.

When Penny gulped, Declan's uneasiness grew exponentially. "Okay, so here's the thing," she started slowly, looking up but avoiding his gaze, her eyes trained over his shoulder. "Boss called last night. Or early this morning, whatever. He wanted to know why we keep getting scooped, and then he… well, you know how defensive I get? He kinda implied you were getting too involved, and he brought up Reijt-"

Inhaling sharply, Declan suddenly found it hard to focus. The Reijt bombings were something they simply _didn't_ talk about. Penny hadn't been working with him at the time, but she'd always been smart enough not to bring it up. It had always been the elephant in the room, always something no one brought up in his presence because he'd earned enough respect in the journalism world that his peers pretended it hadn't happened.

"Penny-" his voice sounded more anguished than he'd meant for it to, and he was almost embarrassed.

Frowning, Penny seemed to realize immediately her error. "I'm sorry," she whispered, meeting his gaze. "Here's the thing, Declan. I trust you. I know you're capable of handling this, and as long as we've worked together… I don't know. I think it's a good thing you get so invested in these stories. Not everyone sees it that way, you know?"

Forcing himself to nod and follow along with this conversation instead of getting lost in events eight and a half years previous, Declan focused his gaze on Penny's face. "I know," he admitted after a few seconds. "So… what did you do?"

Penny studied him for a minute, wincing as she opened her mouth to speak. "I kinda implied- actually, I kinda outright said- well, no kinda about it, since I did say it, and affirmatively at that-"

"Penny," Deacon interrupted with a raised brow as she rambled.

"I told him you'd set up an exclusive interview with Abigail Scott's family."

A pin could've dropped in the room in that minute, and the sound would've been loud enough to send shockwaves through them both. Declan stared at Penelope, a mix of emotions- anger, disappointment, betrayal- and something else- in his gaze.

It was that last emotion Penelope was trying to discern, not able to put a finger on it. He was pissed, that was for sure, but was he… was he _appreciative? _Did he actually acknowledge she'd been defending him? Did he value that? Penelope blinked slowly, dropping her gaze and pushing the thoughts from her mind. "Sorry," she muttered.


End file.
